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Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (Hardcover)

May 2017 Indie Next List

“One of the most horrific chapters in American history is brought back to the national consciousness with alarming detail in Killers of the Flower Moon. After the Osage Indian Nation strikes oil, its members become rich beyond their wildest dreams, only to encounter a vast and murderous conspiracy that will leave more than 60 members of the nation dead. David Grann reconstructs those murders and the subsequent investigations with astonishing care and reveals the depths of a conspiracy that stretched from Oklahoma to Washington, D.C. This story will certainly be one of the most important books of 2017.”
— Steven Shonder, Anderson's Bookshop, Naperville, IL

Summer 2018 Reading Group Indie Next List

“Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann (The Lost City of Z) is a page-turner that reveals a part of American history long forgotten. In the 1920s, the Osage Indians of Oklahoma were some of the wealthiest people in the world. They were also being poisoned and murdered. Grann covers all the sordid details, brings the principal characters to life, and just when you think it’s all figured out, reveals new information. It’s a compelling story of greed, betrayal, J. Edgar Hoover, the Wild West, and murder, still resonating with the Osage today.”
— Alison DeCamp, Between the Covers, Harbor Springs, MI

Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

"Disturbing and riveting...It will sear your soul." —Dave Eggers, New York Times Book Review

SHELF AWARENESS'S BEST BOOK OF 2017

Named a best book of the year by Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, GQ, Time, Newsday, Entertainment Weekly, Time Magazine, NPR's Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "On Point," Vogue, Smithsonian, Cosmopolitan, Seattle Times, Bloomberg, Lit Hub's "Ultimate Best Books," Library Journal, Paste, Kirkus, Slate.comand Book BrowseFrom New Yorker staff writer David Grann, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Lost City of Z, a twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances. In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes like Al Spencer, the “Phantom Terror,” roamed—many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll climbed to more than twenty-four, the FBI took up the case. It was one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations and the bureau badly bungled the case. In desperation, the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only American Indian agents in the bureau. The agents infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history. In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. Based on years of research and startling new evidence, the book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. But more than that, it is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward American Indians that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long. Killers of the Flower Moon is utterly compelling, but also emotionally devastating.

About the Author

David Grann is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the best-selling author of The Lost City of Z, which was chosen as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other publications and has been translated into more than twenty-five languages. He is also the author of The Devil and Sherlock Holmes. His work has garnered several honors for outstanding journalism, including a George Polk Award.

Praise For…

"The best book of the year so far."—Entertainment Weekly

“A marvel of detective-like research and narrative verve.”—Financial Times

The Illustrated Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), in its 2019 Global Peace Index, which ranks nation states in order of their peacefulness, ranks the United States of America in the bottom quarter of peaceful nation states.

The Human Rights Pocketbook Venture is a positive peace initiative of the Empathy Surplus Project (ESP), a UN Global Compact (UNGC) participant since 2014. ESP invites its colleagues in the UNGC, as well as civil society organizations like Rotary and Lions, to partner with its Human Rights Pocketbook Venture to distribute a personal copy of the pocketbook with every 9th grader and incoming college freshman every year.

ESP is grateful for Rotarians for Peace in Wilmington, Ohio, for being the first to distribute pocketbooks to first year students participating in the Westheimer Peace Symposium, Wilmington College, and East Clinton High School 9th graders.

First Lady of the United States of America Eleanor Roosevelt was a major contributor to the development of the ﬁnal draft of the UDHR. In 1948, she wrote,

“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or ofﬁce where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."

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Go to StandUp4HumanRights.org

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